Engineering Information Management

Engineering Information Management solutions manage all of the data used during engineering: technical documents, drawings, data and project information.

What is Engineering Information Management? (EIM)

An Engineering Information Management (EIM) solution is a system that manages documents and drawings including their metadata. Critically, an EIM solution must facilitate multiple revision support across multiple design processes, so that accurate data is always available to the right person at the right time. This ensures data quality, increases efficiency, improves operational excellence and assures compliance with regulations.

Engineering Information Management (EIM) can be technically defined as the strategies, methods and tools used to capture, manage, store, preserve, and deliver engineering content and technical documents related to all engineering-related organizational processes. EIM tools and strategies allow the management of an organization’s unstructured information, wherever that information exists. Since engineering information requires specific management features for the complex business processes with internal and external resources, EIM can be seen as a superset of Enterprise Content Management. Engineering Information Management is also known as Engineering Data Management (EDM) or Engineering Content Management (ECM).

Characteristics of Engineering Information Management

Document numbering

Revision management

References and assemblies

Large CAD files

Document sets per stakeholder

Project phases

Rendition support

Reference management

CAD application support

Title block integration

Copy with references

Document and project workflows

Revision management

Meta data: dependable lookup lists

Viewing and compare

Role base security

Navigation views and to-do lists

Print/plot

What makes managing engineering information so hard?

Engineering information is not just complex – it is constantly in change.
The trend towards outsourcing leads to increasingly extended contractor and supplier networks. Global teams of externals and internals working together on a project require role-based access to data in an isolated work area. This is necessary in order to maintain master data integrity and standardized naming and numbering conventions, including any changes to metadata.

Owner operators working with globally dispersed EPCMs require an additional functionality from their EIM system: they need a full transmittal management system that will track when documents were sent and received, who sent them and what the data quality was.

This becomes even harder when the engineering information is used in multiple projects simultaneously. A solution is needed to manage the creation, approval, distribution and tracking of documents in concurrent projects, ensuring that asset information can be maintained as-built through multiple plant changes and is always available for use.

Engineering Information Management made simple

Meridian provides Engineering Information Management as a multi-CAD platform designed to encourage interoperability between teams and departments by leveraging your existing business systems. It supports engineering collaboration and delivers transmittal management for work packages and full document control – even during concurrent change. Meridian manages master data by providing an isolated work area with automated data validation and a full audit trail for regulatory compliance.

With Meridian, you get complete control of your engineering information in a single solution that can be scaled up to support your business growth.